


breathing's just a rhythm

by eliotkeats



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Relationship Study, Trust, queen & lionheart relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 11:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5665282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliotkeats/pseuds/eliotkeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a love story, but they never wanted it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathing's just a rhythm

It's not a love story.  
  
  
He treats himself like the weight behind her words; not the power behind the throne but the lion crouched at the foot of it.  He's caught in her orbit like an asteroid in a planet's gravitational pull; he slots into the emptiness at her side, gear sliding against a cog familiar, and when he's not with her it's an absence keenly felt.  
  
  
(They triangulate the rest of the cosmos from two fixed points:  
  
She trusts him to always be himself.  
  
He will _always_ trust her.)  
  
  
He smiles; eyes flat and empty, the truth obvious in the motion of his body, hard muscles and bared teeth and the stormy-eyed threat he stares at everyone but her.  With her, he's open (vulnerable) and he knows it, hates it, longs for it, doesn't know what he thinks of it.  He lets her touch him, watches the pull of her mouth, loves the way her eyes go soft when she meets his gaze, the way she touches him - a pat on his shoulder, two fingers trailing along his elbow as she passes him.   
  
  
(In those moments, she thinks she's the only one who could stab, shoot, hit him, because he'd still be staring when the blade slipped in, still be watching as the rust red stain spread over his rib cage, still be meeting her eyes when her knuckles collide with his face and leave it mottled purple-black.  He'd never see it coming, because, well, it's _her_ (and it's him) and they do _not_ harm each other.)  
  
  
It's not a love story, but they never wanted it to be.  It's a story written in bloodied knuckles and rust-smudged palms and her fingertips searing against the line of his jaw, gentle over his carotid artery, and he can't help but slow his breaths with her hands warm against his skin, for only a moment, a second of borrowed time, a breath of stale filtered air.


End file.
